The Sisters Wine

There is a lot of discussion about kindness and why it matters, how to cultivate it, and how to spread and share it. It’s not always easy to be kind, especially when confronted with people who didn’t get the memo, but it definitely is something we should all try to do more of, more often. This video which is an animated adaptation of a commencement speech given by George Saunders at Syracuse University, May 2013 is a beautiful reminder of why kindness really does matter. He summed it perfectly when he said: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”

A recent article published on Care2.com highlighted that being kind is not completely altruistic. It literally increases our levels of health and happiness. They shared seven things that truly, genuinely kind people do. We absolutely advocate the first one, which is to be kind to yourself. Often as women, we are our own and each other’s worst critics. This is something we can genuinely change together. It’s important that we encourage and support and acknowledge each other.

Kindness is actually an act of being mindful. It means we take the time to care, to think about how our actions can impact others. While pondering why kindness really matters, we came across a new campaign that has just been launched in New Zealand by Stacey Shortall category winner of Community & Not For Profit in this year’s Westpac Women of Influence Awards. It is called ‘Who did you help today” and was launched with the support of nzgirl, Westpac, Fairfax, Bloggersclub.com and Minter Ellison Rudd Watts , the law firm where she is a partner. You can learn more about this campaign and how you can support it here. Stacey comments, “Because it’s simple. Life is busy and finding time to reflect on how what we do in helping others requires effort.For us as a brand, it is genuinely important to live our truth, not just give lip service. That was our motivation behind the social media campaign we launched this month, encouraging women to stop, take a moment, acknowledge the special friendships that we as women share and tell each other how truly extraordinary we are. Belinda Nash, in her blog post on nzgirl, summed it up perfectly, when she said it was “a campaign that matters.” We really believe that to be true.